


A Kind of Magic

by Gizzwhizz



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Chocobros - Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Gen Fic, magic as music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gizzwhizz/pseuds/Gizzwhizz
Summary: Prompto doesn't take to Lucian Magic easily. Once he does, however, he becomes the solo audience to a symphony in his head.My piece for "The Regalia Mixtape" FFXV Music Zine
Comments: 20
Kudos: 66





	A Kind of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> I am so happy to finally be able to share this! This was my piece for the "The Regalia Mixtape" FFXV Music Zine and it is honestly one of my favorite short stories I have ever written. I used to be in orchestra and choir all throughout school and I missed exorcising the music part of my brain. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> The title comes from the Queen song by the same name.

Training had officially ended over an hour ago. Most of the new recruits and instructors had long since left the training room. Only one lone figure remained, standing in the center of the room.

Prompto threw his hand out, fingers curled and ready to cradle the handle of the pistol that should materialize any moment—only nothing happened. No shower of blue sparks. No accompanying twinkle like breaking glass to signify the sudden displacement of air around an object that hadn’t previously existed in that space.

Just…nothing.

“Oh, come on!” Prompto cried in frustration. His bangs had grown limp and were starting to stick to his forehead with sweat. Both of his wrists ached from repeating the same motions over and over again. There was even a suspicious heat beginning to gather behind his eyes, though he refused to let it overtake him.

Every other aspect of his Crownsguard training had been well and truly mastered. The physical demands which had helped him build considerably more muscle in his arms and chest, the more boring rote memorization of a surprising number of rules and regulations, and even his performance on the firing range (when he was provided with a weapon beforehand).

His ability to access the magic tied to the Crystal and the line of Lucis, however, was sorely lacking.

And, of course, it was the most important aspect of his training. It wasn’t just about being able to call forth his weapons. Crownsguard weren’t privy to nearly as much raw magic as the Kingsglaive were, after all. Even so, failing to tune into it at all was a clear rejection by the Crystal. Not to mention a nearly instant disqualification from the ranks of the Crownsguard. Cor had made that point very clear in his address regarding their final assessments.

“There you are! Dude, why don’t you answer your phone?” The words made Prompto jump and nearly trip as he turned on his heel. Noct’s voice was quiet as ever, a sigh of exasperation hidden behind the words. Still, it rang out like a bell in the silence of the empty room. The Prince had his hands in his pockets and tilted his head when he got a closer look at Prompto’s face, eyes narrowing a bit. “Dude…are you okay?”

Prompto opened and closed his mouth a few times. His throat was parched and his head was pounding, but how could he explain without losing his battle against the frustrated tears that were still pressing against the backs of his eyes? He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was just as dry as his throat. Noct didn’t say anything else, however. Instead, he just leaned against a pillar to wait for his friend to find his voice. That alone nearly made Prompto break down.

In the end, he couldn’t quite stop a sniffle and he dragged a hand across his eyes, hoping it merely looked like he was wiping away sweat.

“I can’t summon my guns,” he finally said. Good. His voice was mostly steady. That was good.

“Well, probably not. You look exhausted,” Noct drawled.

“No!” Prompto shouted back. His voice echoed in the empty room and Noct lowered the arms that he had crossed casually across his chest. Prompto dropped his own gaze to stare at his feet, feeling his cheeks begin to burn. “No, dude,” he said more quietly. “I mean…ever. Something’s wrong and I can’t…feel it or something. At first I thought it was just because I’m not from here, you know? But most of the Kingsglaive aren’t from Insomnia. So, I just…I don’t…” He waved his hands uselessly in front of him as he ran out of words, ignoring the burning in his wrists at the movement. Finally, he wrapped his arms around himself and simply shook his head.

“No one’s really noticed yet. But this is the last week of training and if I can’t do it, you know they’re not gonna let me in,” he admitted in a near whisper.

“Hey, you know I wouldn’t let that happen,” Noct said. Prompto dared to peek up at him through his sweat soaked bangs and found his friend eyeing him with his most serious face. The words actually made him laugh, though there was no mirth behind it.

“I’m not sure that’s how it works, Noct.”

“’Course it is. I’m the Prince. They gotta do what I say,” Noctis replied. Prompto shook his head again, but his friend was already walking towards him. He paused just in front of Prompto, a strange expression on his face. His dark brows were furrowed but there was also a flush to his cheeks that Prompto usually only saw when he had teased the Prince a bit too much. Then Noct held out his hand.

“Give me your hand,” he said, carefully looking over Prompto’s shoulder instead of directly at him.

“Why—?”

“Just do it,” Noct gritted out, hunching his shoulders a bit. His cheeks grew a bit pinker, but Prompto decided to pretend like he didn’t notice and obediently placed his sweaty palm against Noct’s dry one. The Prince made a face at that and seemed to shake off the last of his hesitation.

“Now close your eyes.”

“Noct—,” Prompto began, but was cut off again.

“Do you always talk back this much?” That shut him up. He’d never heard Noct use his Prince Voice on him like that—against Ignis occasionally when the Advisor came to collect Noct from the arcade, but never with Prompto. Weeks of training to follow orders kicked in and his eyes shut just as quickly as his mouth.

“I don’t know how to describe it so just…try to feel it, okay?” Noct said. Prompto had no idea what he meant, but he clamped down on the urge to ask another question and just hummed in affirmation. For several long seconds nothing happened. He heard the sounds of their own quiet breathing, smelled the stale sweat half soaking his shirt, felt the weight of Noct’s hand and the padded floor beneath his feet and the dull aching still radiating from his wrists.

Then it happened. Something changed. At first he couldn’t even name it, it was so alien. So completely unlike anything he’d ever felt before. It made warmth shoot through him, starting at the hand Noct was holding and jolting straight to the core of him. At last it resolved itself into a sound, but not one that he heard with his ears. No, this was a noise that seemed to exist only within his own head. It was short, a single note from some low instrument he couldn’t name, but it was definitely there. Then it was gone again.

He didn’t mean to open his eyes, but his lids blinked opened in surprise anyway, and when he looked up there was a sword in Noct’s free hand.

“Did you feel it?” Noct asked. The grin on his face told Prompto that he already knew the answer to the question, but he nodded anyway.

“Good, now you try.”

Prompto swallowed, though all it produced was a dry clicking in the back of his throat. Still, he closed his eyes and held out his free hand, trying to recapture—whatever it was that he’d just felt. It was like trying to remember a dream, and did absolutely nothing to help his growing headache, but he did his best to push past it. Noct’s hand in his seemed warm with more than just body heat.

He drew in a breath, and for an instant the world faded away. A single high, trilling note rang through his head, bouncing off the inside of his skull. It made him feel like he was floating. An instant later the noise disappeared and the sudden weight of his own body almost made him trip. Something heavy slipped out of his fingers and clattered to the floor.

Prompto didn’t even hear Noct’s whoop of encouragement or feel the triumphant clap to his shoulder. All he could do was stare down at the pistol laying at his feet.

* * *

“Prompto!” Gladio barked, dodging a wicked looking stinger and punching his longsword through the exoskeleton of one of the giant wasps intent on dive-bombing them.

“On it, big guy!” Prompto shouted back, blinking sweat out of his eyes as he took aim. All around him was a cacophony of noise: shouting and buzzing; gunshots and the dull ringing of steel; the tramping of boots and the crunching of various bits of insect anatomy.

In his head, however, a symphony was playing.

Ever since that first night when Noct had helped him successfully summon his pistol for the first time, the internal music had continued to accompany any instance when he used magic. In fact, it had grown stronger and even extended until he could “hear” when people around him were using it, too. Now, nearly a month into their interrupted road trip, he could hear it each time one of his companions summoned a weapon or a curative or employed some kind of elemental magic. All of it melding into a perfect harmony that swelled in the heat of battle until sometimes he could imagine that all of them were putting on some sort of ballet instead of fighting off monsters.

After a few hunts he had done a bit of research with his headphones one night and thought he’d managed to pin down what they all sounded like.

Noct was a low woodwind, like an oboe. His magic was the heart of their melody, driving each new movement as he warped across the field or unleashed torrents of fire and ice at whatever they were fighting. It rose and fell and grew almost deafening when he accessed the Armiger to unleash his most devastating attacks. The sound was oddly appropriate for his personality as well, understated most of the time but surprisingly lively when it was necessary.

Ignis was a cello. His themes often wound a near perfect harmony with Noct’s, completing the other half of each song as it wrote itself in Prompto’s mind. There was a certain fluidity to his part in their music that perfectly matched the complicated acrobatics that made up his fighting style, much to Prompto’s amusement. And just like the Advisor’s personality, the song of his magic could flit from lighthearted to serious in an instant if the tide of battle shifted.

Most surprising was Gladio. If asked before all of this, Prompto would have guessed that Gladio would be a horn or some other instrument in the brass family. Much to his surprise, however, Gladio sounded more like a piano. Or, more specifically, a harpsichord given the way his notes rang through the air. He had a slightly wider range than either Noct or Ignis and added to both the melody and harmony of their song, sometimes simultaneously. It was beautiful, quite frankly, and not at all what Prompto had expected. And yet, when he really paid attention to Gladio’s fighting style it made sense. There was an awful lot of power required to wield his massive sword as gracefully as he did, and while he didn’t execute flips like Ignis, his body was constantly in motion to preserve both power and momentum between swings.

As for Prompto himself, he seemed to be a piccolo. Being that he didn’t employ any elemental magic the way Ignis and Noct did, and often forgot to pull curatives for himself in the heat of battle, his own notes were more sporadic. In truth, his only real contributions to their little chamber orchestra were the few stray notes he produced when switching weapons or when his ammunition in his pistols was automatically replenished. As a result, his own music was really only a few high bursts of noise, and yet it never sounded out of place, somehow. Rather, the rare note from him served to accent the crescendo of a melody or else paired nicely with a harsh harmony that one of his friends was emanating. It made his chest feel warmer, when he actually stopped to think about it.

He had no idea if the others experienced magic as sound the way he did, but if they did, none of them mentioned it. So he chose to keep it to himself, rather than say anything and sound silly.

If he was the only audience member to the small symphony they regularly created, then that was perhaps a little sad, but it made the whole experience all the more special.

* * *

Never was Prompto more grateful for his “gift” of being able to hear their magic than when they were separated.

When Gladio disappeared and came back with a new collection of scars, he had still been able to catch the occasional harpsichord note in the back of his mind while they waited for the Shield to return.

When they lost contact with Ignis in the madness of Altissia, he’d still heard his cello loud and clear, even if it became wild and discordant at one point near the end of it all.

And after he’d fallen from the train he’d found solace in the sounds of the other three, even if they were nearly too faint to catch and no longer seemed to mesh with his own infrequent bursts of high notes. That, almost more than anything else, had given him hope to keep pushing through the cold and the terrifying discovers he’d made and the taunts Ardyn had thrown at him afterwards when he’d been shackled hand and foot.

The worst, though, was the loss of Noct. When he’d actually calmed down enough to let himself concentrate and found he could still “hear” a steady stream of oboe music in his head, he’d nearly broken down in tears. It wasn’t the melody he was used to hearing during battle, when the notes were intermittent and punctuated by summoning weapons and various other items. Now, inside the Crystal, Noct seemed to be giving off a steady stream of music that never ceased. It was a simple enough melody, but the fact that it was constant background noise gave Prompto solace and the courage to keep going as the nights grew longer and the years wore on.

He fell asleep listening to that quiet oboe more nights than he could count.

When it finally did stop, for a moment he thought his heart would stop with it. Fear climbed up his throat and threatened to choke him until—it rang out again. Louder this time, and more like in the old days, the way he’d used to hear it when they were…fighting.

He was already on his way to Hammerhead when Talcott called to say he was on his way with their long awaited King.

* * *

Everything after that was bittersweet. As they fought their way through the ruins of what had once been their home, their music took on a minor key that permeated everything. There was something more, too. He’d never been much into classical music growing up, but he’d found a taste for it after developing this sixth sense for magic. Ten years ago, every new encounter had seemed to have an improvisational quality to it, an assurance that the song could possibly go on forever.

Now, however, he sensed they were reaching the final movement of a long, long opus.

He had fully expected Noct’s oboe to disappear. Noct had warned them of just what he’d have to do at their final campfire, after all. What he’d failed to consider, however, was what would happen to the rest of it.

Standing in the light of the first true dawn in nearly a decade, it was all he could do not to simply wail out his grief. Not just at losing Noct. That was already a knife in his heart. But what twisted it was the oppressive silence inside his own skull. The cello, the harpsichord, his own spasmodic piccolo, even the various other instruments he’d sometimes picked up from the remaining Glaives over the years: all of it was gone.

For the first time since he was a teenager there was only his own breathing and the quickened beat of his heart. The world didn’t need magic anymore, and it had taken the music with it.

He turned his face into the sun, but couldn’t decide what he should do. Even if he screamed and cried and begged the gods to bring it back, would it do any good? Probably not. And Ignis and Gladio would only think he’d cracked under the weight of his grief. No. He had to hold it together. Hold it together, even though his throat was too dry and his entire body hurt. Even though there were tears on his cheeks and the terrible absence of the notes was beginning to make his head pound.

The ghost of warmth made the palm of his hand itch through his gloves and before he’d even fully registered the odd sensation, he gasped. For an instant the music was back, a single low note drifting through his head as if carried on a breeze. It was only for a few seconds, but it was enough. Enough to know that even if he no longer heard it in the waking world, he’d dream of the music until the day he died. He’d dream of a warm oboe and a furious cello, a steady harpsichord and a flighty piccolo all winding around one another to form the most beautiful song that had ever existed. Or ever would exist.

He would dream of it, until the day when they all met in that place beyond dreaming, where hopefully his friends would be able to hear it too.


End file.
